Pentagon Terminates Academic Partnerships With Ivy League University

The Department of War announced Friday it is cutting ties with Harvard University over concerns participants return with “heads full of globalist and radical ideologies that do not improve our fighting ranks.”

All graduate-level professional military education, fellowships, and certificate programs at Harvard will be discontinued beginning in the 2026-2027 academic year, the Pentagon stated. Announcing the action, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth cited concerns about Harvard’s faculty expressing opposition to the military as well as ties to foreign regimes.

“Our military has had a rich tradition with Harvard throughout American history,” Hegseth said in a video posted Friday to X. “But today, this university with such a unique history, which receives billions of our federal tax dollars, is one of the red-hot centers of hate-America activism.”

The secretary pointed to research programs at the university that are partnered with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as well as the pro-Hamas protests that took over the campus following the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict in September 2023. Hegseth also accused Harvard of continuing to practice racial discrimination in its admissions policy.

Harvard has already been through a monthslong battle over these accusations with the Trump administration which resulted in the university losing more than $2 billion in federal funding, but a federal judge ordered the money to be restored. The administration also attempted to block Harvard from enrolling foreign students, but was been met with a similar roadblock.

The university was also accused by the Department of Education of releasing “incomplete and inaccurate” foreign funding disclosures, all while raking in millions of dollars from China and Palestinian territories.

“For too long, this department has sent our best and brightest officers to Harvard, hoping the university would better understand and appreciate our warrior class,” Hegseth said. “Instead, too many of our officers came back looking too much like Harvard — heads full of globalist and radical ideologies that do not improve our fighting ranks.”

Other universities may also soon be on the chopping block, he warned.

“[We] will evaluate all existing graduate programs for active-duty service members at all Ivy League universities and other civilian universities,” Hegseth said. “The goal is to determine whether or not they actually deliver cost-effective strategic education for future senior leaders when compared to, say, public universities and our military graduate programs.”